Lieutenant Colonel Welch is a KC-10 pilot with experience as a Joint Staff J5 Middle East Strategist. He was commissioned through ROTC from Howard University in 2000. He has a BA in civil/environmental engineering from The George Washington University and an MA in religion from Southern Evangelical Seminary. He served as an Olmsted Scholar in Israel, where he earned a master’s degree in modern Middle Eastern history from Tel Aviv University. He is the author, with Cdr. Kevin Bailey, USN, of Research Note 36, In Pursuit of Good Ideas: The Syria Train-and-Equip Program.
